preparations. He whistled once more. A reply
came from the boat.

"Here I am," he said.

With a last effort, Lupin put out his arm to stop him. But his
hand touched nothing but space. He tried to call out, to warn his
accomplices: his voice choked in his throat.

He felt a terrible numbness creep over his whole being. His temples
buzzed.

Suddenly, shouts below. Then a shot. Then another, followed by a
triumphant chuckle. And a woman's wail and moans. And, soon after, two
more shots.

Lupin thought of Clarisse, wounded, dead perhaps; of Daubrecq, fleeing
victoriously; of d'Albufex; of the crystal stopper, which one or other
of the two adversaries would recover unresisted. Then a sudden vision
showed him the Sire de Tancarville falling with the woman he loved. Then
he murmured, time after time:

"Clarisse... Clarisse... Gilbert..." A great silence overcame him;
an infinite peace entered into him; and, without the least revolt, he
received the impression that his exhausted body, with nothing now to
hold it back, was rolling to the very edge of the rock, toward the
abyss.

CHAPTER IX. IN THE DARK

An hotel bedroom at Amiens.

Lupin was recovering a little consciousness for the first time. Clarisse
and the Masher were seated by his bedside.

Both were talking; and Lupin listened to them, without opening his eyes.
He learned that they had feared for his life, but that all danger was
now removed. Next, in the course of the conversation, he caught certain
words that revealed to him what had happened in the tragic night at
Mortepierre: Daubrecq's descent; the dismay of the accomplices, when
they saw that it was not the governor; then the short struggle: Clarisse
flinging herself on Daubrecq and receiving a wound in the shoulder;
Daubrecq leaping to the bank; the Growler firing two revolver-shots and
darting off in pursuit of him; the Masher clambering up the ladder and
finding the governor in a swoon:

"True as I live," said the Masher, "I can't make out even now how he did
not roll over. There was a sort of hollow at that place, but it was a
sloping hollow; and, half dead as he was, he must have hung on with his
ten fingers. Crikey, it was time I came!"

Lupin listened, listened in despair. He collected his strength to grasp
and understand the words. But suddenly a terrible sentence was uttered:
Clarisse, weeping, spoke of the eighteen days that had elapsed, eighteen
more days lost to Gilbert's safety.